Goat decides on its own to guide blind horse for 16 years (video)

A really touching video about a woman who owns a goat and a horse, and the beautiful relationship that develops between the two animals.

At one point, the horse, Charlie (yes, Charlie-Horse), went blind. She decided that it was time to put him down, but what happens? Their goat, Jack, somehow befriends the horse and starts leading it around.

This goes on for 16 years.

Finally, at around age 40, Charlie the horse dies. Shortly thereafter, the goat starts to slow down and it’s clear his time is almost over as well.

“Who would think that a goat would take up with a blind horse and spend years doing nothing but babysitting this animal, just because he needed help?”

U.S. Border Patrol: More Agents, More Fences, More Technology, More Horses?

By ERIN SIEGAL - 03/15/2013, 01:47AM / Updated 10/16/2013, 03:27PM

Immigration enforcement and drug smuggling continue to be top priorities for the Department of Homeland Security, and the Border Patrol's budget has swelled accordingly, increasing from just $262,647 in 1990 to over $3.5 million dollars in the 2012 fiscal year. They've added more agents, more technology, and higher fences.

Despite such progress, human smugglers and drug traffickers have simply pushed further into mountainous, difficult terrain to avoid detection. That's where horses come in. Since the Border Patrol was founded in 1924, horseback patrols have been widely utilized. In fact, mounted patrols are said to have begun as early as 1904, in El Paso, where men on horseback policed against Chinese immigrants. Horse patrol units now exist along the border in various sectors, through California, Arizona, and Texas. In the San Diego sector, the Horse Patrol unit is based out Imperial Beach. The unit's office is housed in a dull brown portable trailer, and 35 four-legged "vehicles" live within a nearby beige building. Each stall is outfitted with individual turnout paddocks. Agents on the unit are tasked with everything from riding on patrol to mucking stalls, and general horse care. Their days, they say, are typically well over eight hours long. It's common for mounted agents in the San Diego sector to trailer their horses to the east, where they typically work during the night. Just 18 of San Diego's 2,623 border patrol agents ride on the horse patrol, a popular and competitive detail. Jaime Cluff, the supervisory agent in charge, says the horse patrol is an important recruiting tool for the Border Patrol. Monica Slack is a mounted agent and riding instructor with a decade of experience working for the agency. "We spend a lot of time together, 10-12 hrs a day, 5 days a week," she says. "So, we do well with each other." And agency-wide, the use of horses is apparently on the rise. According to statistics on the Customs of Border Patrol website, in 2011, there were 334 horse units in the Border Patrol. That's a 33 percent rise from 2008. Yet the Border Patrol refused to say why more horses are being used—or how effective horse patrols actually are at catching human and drug smugglers. The vagueness is nothing new. This past December, two separate Government Accountability Reports criticized the agency, analyzing its lack of accountability regarding performance. The Border Patrol was also chastised for high levels of employee misconduct and corruption. And more U.S. citizens than ever before are now being caught smuggling, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. In fact, 75 percent of people caught with drugs by the Border Patrol are U.S. citizens, according to the report. It examined 40,000 seizures and suspect information, and drew the conclusion that 80 percent had involved U.S. citizens. The rate has increased every year from 2005 until 2011. Although millions are being spent on "securing" the border, apprehensions are at an all-time low. In San Diego, according to statistics from the Border Patrol, around 119,000 people were apprehended. Most recently, in 2012, just 29,000 people were arrested. Those who get to work from Imperial Beach clearly enjoy their job. Supervisory agent Cluff admits that there's more downtime than there used to be, since the "traffic levels" are "a lot less" then they were five years before. "If I could stay here and do it for another 20 years, I would," he says. Agent Slack reflected a similar sentiment. "I think the Queen of England is 88 years old and she still rides," she says. "So as long as I'm physically able, I'll be riding horses."

Where did the 29% horse in your Tesco burger come from?

Ten months after the horse meat scandal erupted, the Guardian's award-winning author and investigative reporter Felicity Lawrence takes to the motorways of Europe to investigate the sick horses, the rotten meat, the convicted criminal, the alleged fraudster and the meat factories at the heart of the biggest food fraud of the century – and asks, why has no one been held to account?Warning: Some viewers may find some images distressing

Now a Guardian investigation has unpicked one strand of this complex supply chain. Behind beef products sold by famous high-street names we have uncovered a labyrinth of murky meat brokerage that stretches across borders, and takes in drug and horse smuggling, animal welfare abuses, and one of Europe's richest beef tycoons.

At one point in the chain, there is testimony from migrant workers paid cash in hand to process defrosted meat that was "green" and years old. The Guardian has established that some meat from the plant was sent via a trader to the leading European supplier that manufactured adulterated beefburgers sold in several high street stores.

The shadow environment minister Barry Gardiner said that so long after the fraud came to light, it was a scandal that leading players in the industry had succeeded in shifting the blame and avoiding responsibility and that there had so far been no criminal proceedings. "The extraordinary thing is that because of its clout, industry has been able to commit what appears to be a criminal offence – selling the public horsemeat falsely labelled as beef – and just say they are sorry and didn't know. If every petty crook could get off by saying I didn't mean to and I didn't know, then our criminal justice system would be in a very sorry state."

One reason prosecution is so difficult is that retail supply chains have become so complex that pinning down the point at which the crime of mislabelling took place has proved difficult. The factory that supplied Tesco with its 29% horse "beefburgers", for example, was using "multiple ingredients from some 40 suppliers in production batches, and the mixture could vary in every half-hour", according to the Irish department of agriculture.

The Tesco burgers and those at Burger King, Co-op and Aldi that also tested positive for horse DNA were all made by the ABP group in its Silvercrest factory, in the border area of Ireland. ABP – the initials derive from Anglo-Irish Beef Processors – is the leading processor of cattle in Europe.

The company is owned by the Dundalk-born beef baron and property magnate Larry Goodman. The septuagenarian multimillionaire is famous for hard work, a love of private jets, high-level connections in the Irish government and keeping his business affairs secret. His business employs 2,500 people in the Republic and 8,000 in total in Britain, theNetherlands and Poland, in divisions which also include pet food, rendering and renewable energy from fat. About 50 million Europeans are thought to buy ABP products each week.

Goodman is no stranger to controversy. His companies were at the heart of allegations of fraud and political corruption that led to a public inquiry in Ireland in the early 1990s and helped bring down the Irish government. The report of the inquiry, known as the Beef Tribunal, found that there had been several incidents of fraud and an attempt to cover it up, as well as tax evasion. The judge also concluded that illegality in the company had involved the faking of documents, commissioning of bogus official stamps, passing off of inferior beef trimmings as higher grade meat and cheating of customs officers in the 1980s.

Goodman said he had been unaware of the illegal activity and blamed subcontractors operating without head office knowledge. The inquiry found no evidence that he had known.

Where did the horsemeat in burgers made by ABP come from? The Guardian has discovered that the company bought some of its meat from a Dutch businessman called Willy Selten via a trader who could have been a source. Selten ran a meat cutting plant in the town of Oss, south of Rotterdam. In May, he was arrested by the Dutch authorities on suspicion of fraud and false accounting, when official tests on boxes of meat labelled as beef taken from his factory found horse DNA in 21% of them.

Polish workers for Selten interviewed by the Guardian and Dutch TV have claimed they were cutting up and mixing horsemeat, delivered from slaughterers in the UK and Germany, with defrosted beef that was several years old – so old it was sometimes "green". They had to tie towels around their faces to stop themselves being sick. The workers described out-of-hours shifts paid in cash during which they mixed the different meats, and said relabelling of horsemeat had been going on for up to five years.

Selten, who supplies numerous outlets around Europe, has denied fraud and false accounting. He told us through his lawyer that horse had been mixed with beef to order for only 10 months, and claimed that where old meat was being cleaned up and mixed with horsemeat he intended it for pet food.

ABP has blamed the adulteration in its chain on rogue managers at the Silvercrest site in County Monaghan, who, without the knowledge of head office, were buying in frozen meat for burger-making from traders who were not on the list of suppliers approved by its customers.

It admits they breached contracts and strayed out of supermarket and fast food specifications but insists no one in the company knowingly processed horsemeat.

The company told us meat from Selten was sourced for ABP not directly but on occasion by a Cheshire-based trading company called Norwest Foods. That company was set up by Ray MacSharry Jr, son of the former Irish agriculture minister and European commissioner and, the Guardian has established, a former employee of Goodman. Norwest's business interests include an abattoir in Spain, an office in Poland and an animal feed business in Ireland.

Last month both companies announced that they had reached a confidential financial settlement, and Norwest apologised for selling horsemeat to ABP Silvercrest unwittingly. ABP refused to answer questions about where the Selten meat had ended up.

So meat from Selten ended up at ABP for making burgers, but what were Selten's sources? The Guardian has managed to follow a trail from Selten's Dutch factory back to a key source of its horsemeat in the UK. Selten took deliveries from a Cheshire-based slaughterhouse known as Red Lion. It is owned by the Turner family, who slaughter and cut horsemeat and who own a cargo handling company in Dundalk, Ireland.

Before the horsemeat scandal broke, an animal sanctuary planted hidden cameras in key parts of the plant and filmed its Polish slaughtermen apparently abusing horses, and it became the subject of protests. By scouring data from campaigners about lorry movements from the abattoir, we were able to establish that it had delivered to the Dutch business. Polish workers at Selten's factory confirmed that Red Lion lorries arrived once a week. The Red Lion slaughtermen's licences were suspended and they are still being investigated by the authorities.

There is evidence that suggests horsemeat at the Red Lion abattoir came via a route involving organised crime. Two separate sources involved with enforcement have told us that Red Lion was the final destination of deliveries of animals from a loyalist Northern Irish horse dealer, Laurence McAllister.

He was tracked transporting unfit horses and donkeys, some without passports, from Northern Ireland via Scotland for disposal in the UK. His return load on one journey to Belfast was a quantity of cannabis worth more than £500,000, which was concealed in horse lorries. He was found guilty in October 2012 of drug smuggling and later of animal cruelty offences. Some of the horses he had been transporting were sick with chest infections, wounds, diarrhoea and sepsis.

A spokesman for the Turner family insisted that all their horsemeat deliveries to Selten had been properly labelled as horse and were legal. He at first denied but later acknowledged that one horse sent to Selten had been the subject of a recall having tested positive for 'bute', the horsemeat drug banned from the food chain. Tests for bute were taking three weeks at the time, so carcasses were often only recalled once they had already been sold on. The family through their lawyer, initially denied that horse had ever been bought by the abattoir from McAllister. Their lawyer later clarified the family's position, saying said that while they had never knowingly received horses from McAllister, it was possible they had bought from him indirectly without knowing. They had never knowingly slaughtered unfit horses or horses without proper passports, he added, pointing out that horses were only processed once they and their documents had been passed by official inspectors. There is no suggestion that the Turner family or employees at Red Lion had any involvement in drug smuggling.

Tesco, Burger King, Aldi and the Co-op have all apologised to customers and said they had been unwitting victims of fraud at some point in their supply chain. They also say the authorities have confirmed there was no food safety issue raised by the adulteration. They refused to answer the Guardian's questions about where the horsemeat in their beef products had originally come from, and whether Norwest or Selten were involved in their supply chains.

An ABP spokesperson said it had not engaged in any illegal activity and that there had been no breaches of law or food safety at Silvercrest. "We have made it clear we have never knowingly bought horsemeat … if equine was deliberately introduced into the food chain, then we are among those who have suffered as a result of such activity."

Celebrities are fighting it, deals are being brokered, and two proposals are sitting in Congress to end it. So why are horses still being slaughtered in droves?

Wild horses roam the mesas of Monument Valley on the Navajo reservation.

BLACK MESA, Ariz. -- The West is on the verge of a wild horse crisis, according to the Feds. An estimated 33,000 roam freely on public lands and even more on tribal lands. Under a 1971 law, the Bureau of Land Management is supposed to protect these horses and control their numbers so that they don't ravage grasslands or die of starvation.

But critics of horse roundups contend they are a profit-driven enterprise sanctioned by the federal government and driven by business interests like cattle ranching and extractive industries that want to clear land for development.

"The only way to get at those resources is to get rid of the horses," said Navajo activist Leland Grass. He has been trying to stop roundups of horses, which are often bound for Mexican slaughterhouses, on the Navajo reservation.

"It's a big lie," said Jeanne Collom, a horse buyer who said roundups are still taking place on the reservation, and she has been buying them.

This was confirmed by Erny Zah, director of communications for the Navajo Nation, who said roundups will continue until an agreement is signed between Richardson's group and the tribe.

On a late September afternoon, the scene at one roundup on the reservation was chaotic as teens chased horses on ATVs and dirt bikes into corrals. Collom said she buys horses for just $20 a head.

"The population is growing and the range is shrinking," said Elmer Phillips, the head ranger for the Navajo Nation. "What comes along on the range nowadays is a different kind of creature: most of these horses are inbred and under 700 pounds."

But critics say the data the policy is based on comes from an environmental impact study commissioned by Peabody Energy in 2008 as part of the permitting process to expand a coal mine it operates on Navajo land. The coal mine fuels the Navajo Generating Station power plant, which is majority owned by the U.S. Interior Department. Interior oversees the BLM, the agency responsible for managing wild horses, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which issues grazing permits on the reservation and contracts with horse buyers, including "kill buyers," who buy horses bound for slaughterhouses.

Many of the horses rounded up that day were not feral, but owned by Navajos who either lacked a grazing permit or exceeded the maximum allowable number of two horses per permit. Collom said rather than going through government red tape to purchase horses, she tries to buy directly from owners coming to claim their animals. "That's why I hang around the corrals," she said.

At one point, three women came to claim horses they say were taken from their property, and an angry scene ensued. "These are performance horses, not Rez horses," one of the owners shouted.

Head ranger Phillips ordered journalists there not to document the event, telling me and photographer Sam Minkler, who is Navajo, "I will escort you off the reservation."

As we've previously reported, the Obama administration has included a proposal in its 2014 budget that would effectively ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption by preventing money from being spent on inspection of slaughtering facilities. In the next few months, a legal fight to block the opening of horse slaughterhouses in New Mexico and Missouri will reach its final stages.

Meanwhile, Grass and his grassroots group Nohooká Diné sent a resolution to legislators in Washington, DC urging them to pass the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act, currently pending before Congress. Protecting horses on Navajo land is important, Grass said, but a national bill is critical to ensure there is no incentive for horses to be taken from our lands or elsewhere for slaughter.

Horses hold an important place in Navajo cosmology. Leaving the roundup, Grass pulled his truck off the dirt road and cut the engine. A couple of the horses glanced over, swished their tails. "Look at them," he said. "Their mane is the thunder and their eyes are the stars. They possess the same fundamental right to life as we, the five-fingered ones, do."

Reward Offered in Shooting Deaths of Central Oregon Wild Horses

The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the shooting this month of six wild horses in the Big Prairie Summit region of the Ochoco National Forest in Crook County, Ore.

The Case: The U.S. Forest Service gives the following account: On or about Oct. 13, hunters discovered two wild horses who had been shot and killed in the Big Prairie Summit region in the eastern portion of the Ochoco National Forest in central Oregon. They also found a third horse, a juvenile, badly injured from gunshot wounds. The third horse was euthanized. On Oct. 18, Forest Service investigators combed the scene and found three more horses shot and killed.

The HSUS reward offer of $5,000 is in addition to $2,000 being offered by the Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition, a nonprofit group established to protect and preserve the wild horses of central Oregon.

The shooting deaths of six wild horses in the spring of 2011 remain unsolved, despite an outstanding $4,000 reward offer.

Animal Cruelty: Getting the serious attention of law enforcement, prosecutors and the community in cases involving allegations of cruelty to animals is an essential step in protecting the community. The connection between animal cruelty and human violence is well documented. Studies show a correlation between animal cruelty and all manner of other crimes, from narcotics and firearms violations to battery and sexual assault.

“Wild horses roaming free on our public lands are a national treasure to be cherished and protected,” said Scott Beckstead, senior Oregon state director for The Humane Society of the United States. “Shooting these majestic creatures is not only an act of depraved cruelty, but also a serious criminal offense. We applaud the U.S. Forest Service and the Crook County Sheriff for taking these crimes seriously, and for their dedication in working to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

The Investigators: The U.S. Forest Service and Crook County Sheriff are investigating. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Capt. Dan Smith, U.S. Forest Service, (541)383-5798; or the Crook County Sheriff’s Office, (541)447-6398.

Resources: The HSUS Animal Cruelty Campaign raises public awareness and educates communities about the connection between animal cruelty and human violence while providing a variety of resources to law enforcement agencies, social work professionals, educators, legislators and families. The HSUS offers rewards in animal cruelty cases across the country and works to strengthen laws against animal cruelty. To see information on statistics, trends, laws and animal cruelty categories, go to humanesociety.org.

East Tennessee teen wins contest for taming a wild mustang

An East Tennessee teen won Wild Mustang Million Horse competition in Fort Worth, Texas. She helped ready a horse for adoption and earned $10,000.

Eighteen year old Jackie Donahue started riding horses when she was four and taming wild mustangs when she was 14.

"People think they're so wild and mean but they're really... I guess they're harder to start at first maybe but in the end they're super super intelligent and really willing to please," she said.

Jackie Donahue trains at Tri-C Farms in Seymour.

This summer a mustang she trains there was wild. That changed when Jackie decided to enter the Wild Mustang Million Horse competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Jackie's sponsor bid on the horse at auction and got him for a great price: $400. His name is Calibrated Cadenza.

"I took him and I started on him the next day. Taught him to lead. Put a halter on him and taught him to lead taught him to lunge so I could take him out and run him but I honestly didn't start really working with him until like a month and a half later because I was trying to finish for another mustang competition with a different horse," she said.

She describes the competition as a series of preliminary classes and tests on handling and obstacle courses and obedience. She and her horse made the top ten and advanced to the finals.

"You're judged on your artistic interpretation and your choreography with the music to how the horse moves. They want to see things that impress the crowd and impress the judges too so it has to be complex but fun," she explained.

"You can envision yourself winning but when you actually get out there and you do it. I dedicated it to my grandfather who had passed away of leukemia earlier this year and the day after my finals would have been his birthday so his 84th birthday," she said.

Jackie plans on entering more wild mustang competitions.

"You have to try to think like a horse. What do horses do when they're on their own, when they're in herds. And for years when I didn't really have any horses to ride I would go out and I just spent time with horses and I watched how they behaved around themselves and how they communicated and that taught me so much. If you just watch and you listen," she said.

Q&A with Greta Alexandra Oskolkov-Schneider, the world’s most creative body-clipper

If body-clipping was an art, this 19-year-old New Zealander would be Picasso. She takes us into her studio.

You may recognize Greta’s “giraffe clip” from Facebook, where it has been widely circulated.

Thank you so much, Greta, for taking the time to speak with Horse Nation. How old are you and where do you live?
I am 19 years old and live in a small town called Otaki on the Kapiti Coast in Wellington, New Zealand.

Do you travel to do clip jobs?
At the moment I travel around the lower North Island of New Zealand clipping for people–though unfortunately the equestrian community here is quite conservative so most of my work is “basic” clipping and grooming services. I would love to do more creative clipping so if the travel expenses are covered I would be prepared to travel pretty much anywhere!

Greta hard at work on a commissioned fleur-de-lis clip for Mark’s Zanzidini Arrow of Marrick Stallions.

The finished clip.

When did you get the idea to start doing “creative” clips?
The idea to do a creative clip really came from when I used to get a professional clipping lady (Yvonne Denton) to come and clip my pony Cricket. He is a blue roan and when you clip his coat it shows a great contrast–nearly black and white! She would always leave a patch of hair on his rump in the shape of a lightning bolt for me. So last year when a friend of mine offered me her clippers to do a clip myself (as a joke) I made him into a zebra for summer. That one took me three hours, and the positive feedback pushed me into doing more–so last May I finally got my first set of clippers!

Cricket (as a zebra) and Greta cantering along Otaki Beach in summer last December.

How long does it take you to clip a horse?
The complicated creative clips I have done since have varied largely in time consumption–but for a full body it takes roughly between 3-8 hours.

Taking Brandy for a walk after finishing a most time-consuming clip–roughly eight hours of clipping spread out over two days.

Have you grown to enjoy clipping, or does it drive you crazy (hair EVERYWHERE!) like it does the rest of us?
This all depends on the horse, the coat, the design and the environment. You asked if clipping drives me crazy–well, not really, however I do find it really challenging in the wind!! And so it takes me longer. Also the first priority is the horse’s well-being, to have time in-between to move and have a drink, maybe some feed if it’s required.

Do you have any clipping tips or tricks?
For people who like to do their own horses, use the time clipping to bond with your horse! Make it fun and take your time, be gentle and kind–they put up with a lot for us! And I’m sure they will appreciate the one-on-one time with you. Also oil–oil, oil, oil! The more the merrier! Aim for oiling the blades/clippers every 10 minutes and (this should be obvious) use sharp blades on a sparkly clean horse!

Greta on the job. She says, “On windy days when clipping it’s good to dress like your mum would’ve dressed you, and to wear safety goggles to avoid those nasty bits of hair that fly everywhere getting in your eye. If you live in Windy Wellington–it’s probably best that everyone within a 50-mile radius wears safety goggles.”

What is your favorite clip job you’ve ever done?
My favourite clip I have done to date is the Pink Floyd inspired brick wall clip. The horse I did it on, Jack, was such a pleasure to work with and I also feel that this clip has had the least amount of mistakes out of all the creative clips I’ve done!

Where do you find inspiration for your clips?
I couldn’t really say where my inspiration comes from, just that I do like to make a clip to “match” a horse–in how it works with the horse’s colour and personality!

A freshly done spiderweb clip on Cricket.

Tell us about your own horses.
Cricket is my one and only! He is a 14.2-hand Gisborne/Stationbred gelding. I have had him for roughly five years now and we used to compete in show jumping but since I broke my leg two years ago now we are pretty relaxed–we mostly just go for long walks along the beach and in summer go swimming in the river! A little trotting cantering here and there to keep him in good shape. Lucky for me he grows a full coat almost all year round–and is ready now for a new haircut which I plan to do next week sometime!

Thank you for sharing, Greta. For more information and to keep up with Greta’s latest work, “Like” Greta Clips on Facebook here.

Police horse overcomes trauma, snags glory

Trooper and his rider, Const. Gregg John, won gold in every category at a U.S. equestrian police event last weekend.

PHOTO COURTESY GREGG JOHN

Trooper and Const. Gregg John celebrate after winning a uniform event at the North American Police Equestrian Championships in Virginia last weekend.

By:Graham SlaughterNews reporter, Published on Wed Oct 16 2013 As posted on thestar.com

The comeback story of Trooper the horse begins with a slip.

It was a grey, rainy day as the police horse trotted up Dufferin St. with Const. Gregg John, a mounted unit officer, in his saddle.

All of a sudden, one of Trooper’s hooves clipped the curb, tossing the horse and rider onto the wet pavement. An oncoming tractor-trailer was headed their direction, its 16 wheels hurtling ever closer.

“Luckily for us the driver of the truck was able to stop a distance away,” recalled John, 44, of the 2011 accident.

It was a close call, but after that day Trooper just wasn’t the same. Big trucks spooked him. He was no longer the horse any officer could ride around town.

“To use police jargon, Trooper was no longer bomb proof,” John said.

Some officers questioned Trooper’s role on the force. They wondered if he was “fried,” another police term for horses scarred from an accident. A few suggested he retire from the force.

But there was something about Trooper, John recalled. He just had to face his fear.

“We just had to put miles on him, and that meant getting him on the road, exposing him to everything you can,” he said.

John took Trooper around the city. Slowly but surely, he became readjusted to Toronto’s hustle and bustle: raucous Leafs fans outside the Air Canada Centre, rush hour traffic, and those tractor-trailers.

“Every day was training day because you’re going to expose him to things he’s not accustomed to,” he said.

And the training paid off.

The officer and his mount competed last weekend at the North American Police Equestrian Championships, an annual competition held in Richmond, Virginia that has Canadian and American mounted units face off in a variety of categories.

And, for the first time in the competition’s 30-year history, a single horse and officer came first in every event. It was Trooper and John.

“It’s vindication. It’s icing on the cake. It’s concrete evidence of a lot of hard work,” John said.

Trooper remained calm and collected during the categories — uniform, obstacle and equitation (broadly, the team’s gait and general grace) — winning each one. The Toronto police team also came in first place overall at the international event.

It was an emotional win for John. The victors of the obstacle course are awarded the William McCarthy Trophy, an honour named after a Philadelphia officer who was thrown from his horse and killed by an oncoming truck in 1987.

It was a fate that could’ve been his own, but John says the connection that all police officers share was what made the win so special.

“The McCarthy family presents the trophy to the winning officer. That in and of itself is a feeling of no other,” he said.

Despite the lengths Trooper has come since the accident, John still sees a few areas where the horse can improve.

“Trooper is phenomenal, but he is not without his little quirks. He’s not perfect at anything, but he’s very, very good at everything,” he said. “That is the benefit to having him.”

To look at him now — a sleek chestnut Thoroughbred who flies over jumps, knees tucked, ears pointed forward in concentration — you’d never know that the same horse was found starved and partially blinded in the Florida Everglades.

Nowadays, Prodigioso, who has developed a fondness for Scotch mints, is considered the smartest horse at Sherwood Farm in St. Catharines where he’s lovingly tended by owners Marilyn Lee-Hannah and her 27-year-old daughter, Robin Hannah, who trains and rides her “special guy.’’

They adopted the 6½-year-old former racetrack horse who “loves to please’’ in May. They saw his photo on the Facebook page of the non-profit horse rehabilitation group, Florida TRAC (Florida Thoroughbred Retirement & Adoptive Care Program) and were moved by his story.

And a sad, but not particularly unusual, story it is.

South Florida SPCA took this photo of Prodigioso shortly after finding him abandoned in the Everglades with a cement bucket tethered to his back legs.

Someone had called the South Florida SPCA after seeing Prodigioso by the side of an Everglades road in July 2012.

“He was a starving rack of bones,’’ said South Florida SPCA spokeswoman Jeanette Jordan, adding that abandoned horses are common in a state with no legal slaughterhouses.

The frightened horse had rope burns on his back ankles, which were tied to a bucket of cement. He’d been dragging the bucket along “in search of food and water,’’ said Jordan.

Had the SPCA been able to prove who owned Prodigioso when he was found, criminal charges would have been laid, said Jordan.

Prodigioso also had scars on his face, feet that oozed with a painful thrush infection and a right eye that had been freshly blinded.

“He could have run into a tree — there’s no way of knowing’’ how his eye was damaged, said Celia Scarlett-Fawkes, vice-president and intake director of Florida TRAC.

The group, which helps former racetrack horses find “second careers’’ and works closely with the SPCA, agreed to take Prodigioso into care.

The Jockey Club in Kentucky registers Thoroughbreds and they all have tattoos under their lip. That’s how Prodigioso was identified.

His racing career was less than stellar: the first time he ran was in March 2011, the last in January 2012 when he came 11th. His best showing over the entire period was a seventh-place finish.

When horses are not winning races and not covering the cost of their upkeep, some owners will just give them away and wash their hands of the animal, said Jordan.

After a couple of months, the horse, which had visibly trembled on arrival at Florida TRAC’s rehab centre, started playing with other horses. He “had to get new bearings’’ to get used to only having one eye, said Scarlett-Fawkes.

By about nine months he had recovered to the point where he was ready to be matched with a new home. He weighed about 450 kilograms, a healthy hike from the 225 to 270 kilograms he weighed on arrival.

But while the handsome horse was a “pretty little mover’’ with a long, loping stride, most people backed off when they heard he had only one good eye.

Not Marilyn Lee-Hannah, who was perusing Florida TRAC’s Facebook site and was taken by the fact Prodigioso was a dead ringer for another horse she’d once had and loved.

“My daughter said, ‘We just don’t have room.’ ” (They currently have 35 horses, 12 of their own, the rest boarders.) “I said, ‘He’s blinded in one eye,’ and she said, ‘We have to have him.’ ’’

Lee-Hannah saw him once in Florida before he was transported to Canada in May. She and her daughter have never regretted the adoption, which has been written about a couple of times in the online publication, Off-TrackThoroughbreds.com which highlights the success stories of former racehorses.

“He’s special and he knows it!’’ said Robin Hannah, who’s preparing Prodigioso — called Piper when he’s at home — for a show in Lexington Va.

“When I first started working and riding him he was nervous of all new things. To help him cope with the vision loss I do lots of different things with him, and show him there is nothing to be afraid of.

“Now he is so brave and takes me over to investigate things he would shy from before like tarps, water, dogs, etc. I talk to him non-stop while riding him . . . let him know it’s OK.’’

Hannah and her mother say they’ll never sell Prodigioso. They hope to keep training him, at a slow, unhurried pace, to increase his confidence and show that former racetrack horses can have successful second careers in competition and as companion animals.

SAFE Act

The Safeguard American Food Exports "SAFE" H.R.1942 is the current bill proposed in the House and Senate to protect American horses from slaughter. PLEASE contact your legisltors and ask the to cosponsor and support SAFE.

Children 4 Horses is on Facebook

Declan Bio

Declan is honored to be the 2012 ASPCA's Humane Kid of the Year and the first ever recipient of the ASPCA Junior Equine Angel Award. Declan is also an ASPCA Junior Equine Welfare Ambassador.

After hearing about the inhumane and cruel practice of horse slaughter, now ten-year-old Declan, decided he needed to raise his voice. He created Children 4 Horses, to spread the word about horse advocacy issues and worked diligently with the Million Horse March campaign to collect letters from children to inspire lawmakers to end the slaughter of American horses.

Declan’s dedication to horse advocacy brought him to the nation’s capital twice, where he represented over 1,000 children from the United States by presenting the letters to legislators in Congress. While in Washington DC, Declan met with Congressman Frank Guinta of New Hampshire, where he shared his opposition to the inhumane treatment of horses and subsequently garnered the Congressman’s co-sponsorship of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (S.1176/H.R.2966).

Declan also joined forces with the “Horses on the Hill” campaign, speaking before celebrities, Congressmen and Senators to lobby against horse slaughter and advocate for the protection of horses under S.1176/H.R.2966. In addition to his three Washington DC visits, Declan testified at a hearing for a bill opposing horse slaughter at the New Hampshire State House in January, 2012.